


Cursed with knowledge

by Kimmy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 12:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17203304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimmy/pseuds/Kimmy
Summary: Thanos made it so they never existed. It wasn't death and there were no bodies left. Bucky's arm disintegrated with him, Iron Spider with Peter. Slowly, everyone started to forget... everyone but Tony.





	Cursed with knowledge

He remembers every single one of them. He remembers all of them, no matter how close or distant their relationship was. He starts to feel closer to them every day as he watches his world crumble.

No one else remembers.

FRIDAY does. FRIDAY can’t forget, because even if they never existed, they did, and an AI like Tony built cannot be tricked with magic the way people can. FRIDAY says good morning to him and lists every one of their names, and Tony feels closer to them than the people who remained as he watches them forget.

Bruce is the only one who believes him. He carefully memorizes everything FRIDAY tells him about them but he doesn’t have that emotional connection anymore, Tony can see it. He’s still grateful someone is helping him find a solution.

Steve wants to believe him for so long but at the end, Tony tells him about Bucky and Steve just looks at him with pity and Tony hates him more than he did in Siberia. 

Okoye holds on for so long but eventually when she mutters T’Challa she seems more confused why than determined. Then she stops.

Tony finds Vision’s body and no one cares. 

He keeps thinking what now. What to do with it. Does he bury it? Does he try to fix it? If, no,  _ when _ , he has to think  _ when _ he finds Thanos, and gets the best of him, and gets the stones back, he will bring Vision back.

He already killed Jarvis, he let him go too easily, he can’t lose Vision too.

(He already lost him, there’s nothing but an empty shell.)

He places a glass coffin in the workshop. The body ashen and pale and a hole still in his head and every morning Tony comes to work and looks at it and keeps trying to find a way to track Thanos. 

He wondered, at first, if Thanos could have dusted himself. Or somehow… disappear, later. But everyone remembers Thanos, and Thanos’ defeat, which just brings up so many questions and Tony has no answers to them. (Why, why would he made them think they won, what kind of twisted mercy was he playing at?)

Rocket laughs at him and Tony can’t manage to have him tell him to fuck off and insist he doesn’t know any dumb trees. He tells Tony they are both geniuses so they should know trees don’t talk and Tony just… leaves him alone and when Rocket leaves, doesn’t try to stop him.

Thor forgets Loki so quickly Tony finds himself willingly forgetting the victims of the Battle of Manhattan for the sake of trying to find a way to bring him back. Bring them all back.

He knows what Loki did. It doesn’t matter now. Loki died before the snap but Thor forgets him. So quickly. That means it really can be undone, right? All of it, not just the half. Tony tries to convince himself and sometimes he believes it.

(There must be a reason Thor forgot Loki, after all.)

Thor didn’t forget Heimdall and Tony keeps wondering what the fuck that meant, what was special or different about Loki, if Loki is really dead, if what Tony had managed to scramble together from broken pieces of information Thor gave him before he forgot is accurate. He tells himself to stop overthinking it and just find a way to bring them back.

All of them.

Okoye still remembers Shuri, she’s just convinced that she was an only child. So does Bruce. That’s how Tony knows she’s still there, he keeps looking for her but he can’t find her.

One day, he will find her. Shuri isn’t a titan and didn’t try to destroy the world (not that she couldn’t if she tried) and she’s not dusted, probably still on earth, so she has to be easier to find. And there is no need to form an elaborate battle plan for after he finds her, and that helps.

It doesn’t mean he will know what to say when he eventually finds her. But it will be alright, because she will listen to his silence and hear it all and then she will join him and Bruce. She will ask him to tell her about T’Challa and there will be a strange kind of longing without a hint of recognition in her eyes that breaks Tony.

Drax. Gamora. Quill. Mantis. Wanda. Wilson. Strange. Groot. Fury. Maria.

Betty. Bruce didn’t talk about Betty before, but he didn’t talk differently now.

T’Challa.

Bucky.

_ Peter _ .

There were days when Tony woke up and went down to the workshop and wondered if it was all a sick trick of his imagination. He didn’t talk to anyone these days. Steve, Thor, even Pepper thought he’d finally crashed. Rhodey didn’t talk to him. He was worried but he wanted to trust Tony.

Some days, Tony wondered if they really were right. If those people never…

Some days Tony wasn’t sure if he wasn’t working on a crazy project. But he still kept working.

There was the constant fear, sheer terror that one day Shuri will laugh at him, that Bruce will leave, that they won’t believe. That Rhodey and Pepper will drag him to a therapist who will “help him” forget.

He wakes up every day with terrifying anxiety, trying so hard to remember every detail.

What if one day,  _ he _ forgets?

Every day, he wakes up, he remembers. 

It is a blessing.

It is a curse.

**Author's Note:**

> :)


End file.
